


this relationship we're staging

by piratekelly



Series: what a beautiful mess this is [3]
Category: Hawaii Five-0 (2010)
Genre: Cohabitation, Comfort, Established Relationship, Evolving Relationship, Falling In Love, Feelings, Found Family, Friends to Lovers, Growing Pains, M/M, Steve's Abandonment Issues, happiness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-12
Updated: 2020-07-12
Packaged: 2021-03-05 01:28:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,790
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25226101
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/piratekelly/pseuds/piratekelly
Summary: No relationship is perfect, but theirs feels like it is.
Relationships: Steve McGarrett/Danny "Danno" Williams
Series: what a beautiful mess this is [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/537928
Comments: 31
Kudos: 142





	this relationship we're staging

**Author's Note:**

> This just kind of poured out of me this morning. Unbeta’d like usual. Once again, title from Jason Mraz’s “A Beautiful Mess”.

Steve generally doesn’t sleep with the fan on.

Don’t get him wrong, he will during a particularly brutal heat wave – after all, he’s learning to be nicer to himself – but years spent in military barracks and even longer leading missions in places he can never talk about mean he’s capable of sleeping in positions and places so uncomfortable the average person could never begin imagine all of them. Circulating air is a luxury he lived without for nearly half his life, and the white noise of the ceiling fan rotating above him only keeps him awake. If he needs to cool off, he has the ocean.

He’s been sleeping with the fan on a lot lately.

Danny, Steve has learned, is the physical embodiment of a furnace, a furnace that likes to sleep plastered against his side any night he sleeps over. Steve took the comforter off his bed weeks ago when he finally came to terms with the fact that if he was now going to be sleeping next to a human volcano most nights he was going to have to make some adjustments. When turning the ceiling fan on as high as it could go didn’t work, he washed and stored his heavy blankets and started sleeping under a single sheet.

He’s had to make a lot of adjustments recently.

Now that Danny is here most mornings Steve towels off completely after his morning swim, leaving his trunks outside to dry in the Hawaiian sun. Danny, he’s learned, is only as coordinated as it takes to get downstairs and turn on the coffeemaker first thing in the morning, and after the first (and only) time he slipped and spilled hot coffee on himself, Steve made sure to keep the floors dry. He does it because he cares about Danny, deeply, more than he ever imagined he could care about another person, but he also does it because Danny threatens to withhold sex for an undisclosed amount of time if he nearly brains himself on the dining room table again.

This is just one item on a laundry list of things Steve has had to adjust to now that he has someone else to consider. As the days turn to weeks turn to months he catalogues all the things he never had to keep in mind when he was living on his own: keeping the fridge stocked regularly instead of waiting until you only have condiments and spoiled Chinese food before you go on a grocery run; the importance of snack foods, especially those that are kid-friendly; that you can’t just throw all your laundry in a single load, turn the dial to whatever sounds good, and let it go.

Steve isn’t the only one who’s had to make some concessions around here. Danny, while not necessarily messy, does have annoying habits of his own, not the least of which includes leaving towels on the bathroom floor, his habit of letting dirty pans soak in the sink a day too long. The times he doesn’t tell Steve he’s planning on cooking dinner and gets mad when Steve walks in with take-out. The truly ridiculous number of hair products now cluttering Steve’s – _their_ – bathroom vanity.

They argue – because _that’s_ news – but the nature of their bickering changes. Instead of Steve’s Crazy Stunt of the Day – and, really, Danny should make a calendar there are so many – it’s Danny telling Steve he is no longer allowed to wash Danny’s ties after he put one in the dryer _on purpose_. Or Danny taking so goddamn long in the shower, seriously, what is he doing in there? Or, most recently, _Steve I swear to God if you don’t get some WD-40 and fix that laundry room door you’ll be sleeping outside_.

(He spends one night in the hammock. He gets the WD-40. Danny gives him the most thorough blowjob of his life as a thank you.)

But for all the things that have changed when it comes to the two of them, all the adjustments that have been made, so much stays the same. They’re still so in each other’s pockets that, if they had any shame, they might feel a little weird about it. They’re best friends, and even if their relationship hadn’t evolved into what it is, they still would be. After all, the things that made them friends are still there, because those are the same things that turned them into lovers, too.

He still tells Danny he loves him. The weight of it is all that’s changed.

Danny officially moving in is an exercise in patience and compromise. It takes weeks leading up to the actual move-in day for them to sort through both of their things, determine what stays, what’s garbage, what can be donated. Pictures of Danny’s family are put on the walls, Danny’s sectional couch gets sold but he gets to keep his pots and pans because Steve knows how particular he is about his kitchenware. Danny makes Steve get rid of the staggering amounts of junk he keeps anywhere he can fit it. They clear out the guest room completely and let Grace decorate, make it a room of her own, and it doesn’t hit Steve until weeks later when he’s tucking her in one night and realizes holy shit he has a _kid_ now.

(He buys a third Adirondack chair, the same size as the others. It makes his heart race to imagine her growing into it.)

Little changes make their way into their previously established routines. They still drink beer on the beach in Steve’s backyard, settle into the white noise of the ocean lapping at the shore, but instead of talking shop they bat around ideas for what they should do the next time they have Grace for the weekend. Instead of wrapping their fingers around the necks of their beers, they lace their fingers together, hanging between them as the sun sets. Their morning routine now includes coffee flavored kisses and comfortable silences, Steve’s hand on Danny’s thigh while they drive to work. They mutually agree to try their best to check their day jobs at the door and try to be Steve and Danny, Average Couple, when they’re at home. Most days they’re successful, but there are days where life is just too hard, it’s too exhausting to pretend that everything is okay when they see the worst of humanity day in and day out. Those days they curl up on the couch and watch Discovery and just exist with each other until the world rights itself again.

Steve still makes him tag along on his outdoor adventures, but he also makes sure to take them to areas he knows Danny will like. He makes sure to keep Danny’s knee in mind, makes an effort to keep their hikes as low impact as possible. Steve learns to consider others in ways he hadn’t before, tries to be sensitive to the needs of the people around him, and in a previous life that would have been considered weak, a sign he was going soft. Once upon a time he would have believed it, but Danny has made it abundantly clear that caring about people so much is a source of strength. Danny is the strongest person Steve knows, and he cares deeper than he thought a single person could.

Danny, for all that he still loudly claims to hate the ocean, will sometimes join Steve when he swims because the water is important to Steve, an extension of him, and when you love someone you share the things that are important to them. It makes Steve happy to be able to kiss Danny as they bob in the ocean, to watch Danny’s hair get lighter and lighter the more time they spend outside. It gives Steve a feeling of permanence, that as long as they stay like this, just like this, nothing can take it away. They still communicate through pointed glances and vague hand gestures, but there’s a warmth there, a fondness that hadn’t existed before, reassuring them that yes, this is now, always has been, and always will be just their thing.

(He still drives Danny’s car. It still annoys him. That hasn’t changed at all.)

They still have team cookouts at the house, but instead of sitting next to each other like they always do Steve will sit in the sand in front of a seated Danny and lean back between his legs, let Danny card his fingers through his hair. It soothes him, and Danny knows that, but it grounds them both, keeping them tethered to the here and now, where they’re surrounded by family and laughter and so much _love_ that it nearly makes Steve burst out of his skin with how overwhelming it is. After he spent so long resigned to never having anything close to this he feels so full, so lucky to have all the things he missed out on for so long, the things he never allowed himself to long for so he wouldn’t be disappointed when, inevitably, they never came.

He says as much to Danny later that night when they’re wrapped around each other under one flimsy sheet, safe in their bed. Some of their most important conversations happen here. There are so many secrets hidden inside these walls, so many fears have been shared, so many nightmares that have left both of them waking up in a cold sweat. Steve has never known comfort and safety like this, has never had a place where every touch is full of promise and love, intended to reassure instead of hurt. Tonight is no different.

Steve tells Danny that his life the last few months has felt like a dream, that being so happy and content scares him because he’s afraid that any moment he’s going to wake up in the middle of a jungle thousands of miles away and none of it will have been real. He’ll open his eyes and be surrounded by his team and the wet smell of earth and live in a world where he’s never known Danny’s touch, never held Grace as she fell asleep, never even came home. And Danny will kiss him, deep and tender, a kiss that always leaves Steve breathless with how loved it makes him feel, and Danny will ask him if that felt real enough, assuring Steve that he’s not going anywhere, that he would find him in any universe in which they both existed. Steve will nod, exhale shakily, turn on his side, and fall asleep with Danny’s solid presence at his back.

These days, Steve always sleeps with the fan on. He has Danny to keep him warm.

**Author's Note:**

> Fuck I missed this ‘verse. Comments are truly, genuinely appreciated, please don’t feel afraid to say anything I promise I’m nice. If you wanna talk about this ‘verse or just random shit or prompt me (though I'll admit I'm slow at those) I’m piratefalls on tumblr.


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